Ndola - Just Go With It

I have decided the motto for this trip is "Just Go With It". 

We had no travel issues on the way here, but have had a few interesting experiences along the way. 

We caught a 10 hour flight from London to Johannesburg (or known by our professors as J-burg). We were not in business class like the flight to London, but still had a great flight. I took the regular dose of ZzzzQuil and slept like a baby for a few hours. The interesting part of the trip was that one of the students was sitting behind a little girl  who had an accident on the plane... Lets just say his feet got a little wet and he ended up in business class for the remainder of the flight. He was a great sport about the whole ordeal, but it does make for an interesting story! 

We made it to J-burg and had a little time to kill in the airport before catching the flight to Ndola. The J-burg airport has a number of stores, including the usual high-end suspects (Guess, Burberry, Hugo Boss, etc.) but also had some awesome local shops that I was tempted to go crazy in. I figured I should probably wait until my return trip to get something in the airport, so I forced myself to walk away from the hand carved giraffes. 

To get on our plane to Ndola, they used a bus to shuttle us from the J-burg terminal out to our plane. We had about a 2 hour flight (which is a total guess - by the time we got on the flight I was a bit jet lagged and had given up trying to keep up with the time). Once we arrived in Ndola, we were bussed 100 yards to the immigration terminal building to "officially" get into Ndola. Once we got through immigration we waited for someone from Northrise to pick us up. When no one showed up (and we could not get a hold of anyone because it was lunch hour at the university) we took 2 taxis to the university. It turns out they did not think we were coming in until tomorrow, so they were quite surprised to see us! 

Our hosts here are Moffat and Doreen Zimba, who started Northrise. They were both very welcoming and friendly. Once we sat down for a bit, Moffatt took us out for a late lunch at the local cafe/grocery store. The food was delicious and the store was really neat. I would love to go back ad explore a bit more later.    We then checked into the Savoy hotel across the street from the university (which is different from the one we originally thought be would be staying in, but still nice). 

I have already made one mistake, in that I brushed my teeth in the sink without thinking. They have a kettle in the room for boiling water, but hopefully one brush wont hurt me!

We are going to head out to dinner here in a bit and then catch the championship soccer match between Zambia and Zimbabwe tomorrow. 

I will try to write again sometime tomorrow. 

Thanks for reading! 

Hannah